Grandma's Kitchen Table

Good Friends Good Food: Zucchini - Grilled Zucchini with Red Onion and Feta

      This week we are cooking with zucchini, there is still a lot of garden zucchini around yet in Indiana.  We eat a salad daily, so I like to change it up for variety and am always looking for interesting salad recipes.  Earlier in the year I came across this recipe from Bon Appetit and saved it for zucchini season. You can see it here, Grilled Summer Squash with Red Onion and Feta.

      The recipe is easy enough, Mark grilled the zucchini and red onion on the grill and I just had to arrange it on a plate with the banana peppers (from a jar), the feta cheese, red pepper flakes, and the dressing.  Very simple but a delicious combination and it looks like more than the sum of its parts, as they say.

      This was an easy and tasty salad that put the fresh garden zucchini to good use.  I am very happy to have made its acquaintance and will make it again.  To see what the others made with their zucchini, you can click on the members' blogs listed here: Peggy, Margaret, Ulrike, Nancy, Donna, and Ellen.

      Next up is Pumpkin, posting on November 6.  If you would like to join in, just leave a link to your post in the comments section at any of our blogs and we will come and see what you made!

Good Friends Good Food - Tomatoes: Taco Tomatoes

 
     This week we are cooking with tomatoes.  We eat a lot of tomatoes, both cooked and uncooked. Most every dinner we have a salad with some kind of tomato...that said, there is nothing like late summer in Indiana for fresh garden tomatoes to make those salads sing.  Now, at the tail end of tomato season, I find myself actually cooking with them more, making sauce and such.  This week I made Taco Tomatoes.

      Making Taco Tomatoes is easy enough, I just sliced a thin top portion off the top of the tomato, hollowed out a good portion of the harder pulp and seeds, and filled it up with a mix of taco meat filling.  I topped it off with a bit of cheddar cheese, plopped the thinly sliced top portion back on the top, and baked it in the oven at 350 degrees for 25 minutes. 

      My taco meat mix is nothing out of the ordinary.  Ground beef (cooked and drained of the drippings), salt, pepper, chili spice, cumin, onion, finely diced hot chili pepper, sliced black olives, black beans (drained and rinsed) and some tomato paste, add some water to get the right consistency for your taste.  You can make whatever taco mix you like. 

      I served the Taco Tomatoes on a bed of lettuce and with some homemade tortilla chips seasoned with chili lime seasoning.  By "homemade," I mean I cut small corn tortillas into wedges and dabbed a little olive oil on them, seasoned with the spice and baked them in the oven for the same time as the Taco Tomatoes, flipping the chips halfway through the baking time.

      This was a delicious meal, we are thinking we will put this process to good use in the future. I made four of them, I ate one, there were no leftovers so it can be said that Mark was a huge fan. To see what the others made with their tomatoes, you can click on the members' blogs listed here: Peggy, Margaret, Ulrike, Nancy, and Donna.

      Next up is Zucchini, posting on October 23.  If you would like to join in, just leave a link to your post in the comments section at any of our blogs and we will come and see what you made!